Law typically serves to contain the expression of human desire within safe bounds, but Jesus calls us to follow him in fulfilling the law through radical love and mercy that always seeks reconciliation.
An Open Table where Love knows no borders
An Open Table where Love knows no borders
Sermons on Reconciliation (Page 3)
Recognising what sort of sacrifices we are called to make and what sort of sacrifices we are called to refrain from making is crucial to faithfully following the way of Jesus.
Baptism is to the Christian life as a wedding is to the married life – an ongoing symbol of the vowed and relational life in God.
The Spirit of Jesus unites us across previously hostile boundaries and teaches us a language of liberating love.
Meeting us on the road of despair, Jesus reveals to us that suffering and defeat are God’s means of bringing new life and hope.
Jesus subverts our concepts of sin and offers to open our eyes and free us from it all.
Although often dismissed as utopian nonsense, Jesus’s teachings about non-retaliation and love of enemies are the key to the salvation of the world.
We make a devilish mistake when we project the origins of hell onto God. Jesus calls us to follow him into a new way of life that will save us from plunging into the hells of our own making.
Jesus is the Word – what God has to say – who reveals true humanity and illuminates our path to becoming fully and truly human.
The culture of God is so radical in its loving embrace of everyone that mainstream society will see it as a dangerous rejection of all it holds dear.
The people who blame Jesus for increasing violence may be right. He has kicked out the foundations of our peace-keeping strategies, and now violent chaos will grow unless we learn the ways of love and mercy.
God’s Holy Spirit gathers us into one body where our differences are not erased or downplayed, but boldly offered in love and service of one another.
Jesus is heart-broken when we refuse his call to gather with him in a place of powerlessness, vulnerable to the hostility of a power-hungry world.
In an us-and-them world, people hope to find a way to get God on their side, but Jesus confounds our expectations of God siding against others.
In a world increasingly divided between violent powers, Jesus leads a kingdom that is a radical peaceful challenge to both of them.
Only when the world models itself on the self-sacrificial love and mercy we have seen in Jesus will it be saved from the cycles of apocalyptic violence and chaos.
En Cristo somos uno con toda la carne y la sangre, y por lo tanto nuestra lucha no es contra ningunas personas, sino contra los espíritus y los principados y los potestades que dividirían a la gente y les harían enemigos.
Building impressive buildings can be about a desire to monopolise and contain God, whereas God wants us to break down any walls that divide and exclude anyone.
A sermon in response to a broken relationship in the church
We are prepared to sacrifice and kill in the name of our God, but God is willing to be sacrificed and be killed to save us, even when we were enemies.